oh brother where art thou, oh sister draw near
by SerenLyall
Summary: "I know," Leia says. "Somehow, I've always known." And it's true. Through the years-through all the blood and pain and tears-he was her one constant, her one unshakable foundation of stone in a wild sea of fear and uncertainty. Just as she was his. (or, eight moments in Luke and Leia's relationship, both before and after they knew of the blood that bound them)
1. i

**Disclaimer:** Star Wars, Luke Skywalker, and Leia Organa, and all other thus-related characters, places, and events are not mine, and never will be. Unfortunately.

 **Rating/Warnings:** Teen; no warnings for this chapter - the rating is for later chapters

 **(Chapter) Time Frame:** two days after the end of _Return of the Jedi_.

 **Notes:** There will be a total of eight chapters, each inspired by/written using a line of lyrics from the song "Hey Brother." Lyric credit goes to Avicii.

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 _written for siths-sirenia on tumblr_.

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 ** _i. hey brother, there's an endless road to rediscover_**

Leia is there when Luke wakes in the infirmary on _Home One_ , silent and still in slumber, curled into an armchair that looks as if it had been stolen from one of the briefing rooms. She is holding his hand-his left in her right, as seems to be their wont-their fingers twined and tangled together.

Luke looks at her for a long moment, blinking slowly, blue gaze blurred from the fog of whatever sedative the doctors had given him. Her dark hair is arranged in its usual crown of braids, and she is dressed in the same standard uniform he has seen her in a thousand times-but too he can see the dark shadows hollowing her closed eyes, the sharp jut of her cheekbones, the way her shirt hangs loose over her shoulders as she curls over herself.

 _This war has taken so much from her,_ Luke thinks, and a sharp pang of sorrow lances through his heart. _Oh, sweet sister,_ and Luke relishes the taste of that thought-sister, _sister_ his heart sings, over and over again, as if by repeating it a hundred times he will understand better the full meaning of that precious word- _I wish I could give you some of the peace I've found._

As if she had heard his thought, Leia stirs. She blinks, coming slowly back to wakefulness-and then she bolts upright when she catches sight of Luke watching her, soft smile curling his lips.

"Luke," she gasps, and in another instant she is sitting on the edge of the bed, her hand still in his. She smiles at him, brilliant and full of an emotion Luke can't quite seem to place, and for a heartbeat she is neither war-torn leader nor half-broken woman, but rather simply _Leia_ , unadulterated and unburdened-just Leia, in all of her fire and iron and . "We were really worried," she tells him, and reaches up to smooth the hair off of his forehead. "When you collapsed on our way back from the clearing, I thought..." She takes a deep breath and shakes her head, as if to clear her thoughts.

"Sorry," Luke says, hoarse and thick, with a half-crooked grin. Her touch is soft and cool against his temple, and his eyes close against his will, the siren song of the sedatives surging as his walls lower and his strength fails in the wake of her soothing-and dare he say healing?-touch. Yet Luke fights to stay conscious, prying his eyes open to look at his sister once more, a sudden question burning in his mind and fumbling on his lips in his desperation to speak. "Father's ashes?" he asks, quiet and half-slurred.

"I have them," Leia reassures him gently. "Now sleep," she tells him softly, seeing his drooping eyes and feeling him relaxing beside her. "Don't worry," she adds, when he struggles to look at her and his fingers tighten needily around hers, "I'll be here when you wake up."

 ** _-x-_**

Leia is there when he wakes again, just as she promised. This time, however, she hears the shift in his breathing and looks up from her datapad as soon as his eyes open. "Good morning sleepyhead," she teases gently, even as she moves to sit on the side of his bed once more.

"Morning," Luke mumbles. His tongue feels thick and swollen, his mouth stuffed with cotton.

Leia grins, and without prompting stands and goes to fetch him a cup of water. "Here," she says, sitting down once more. Bracing the back of Luke's head, Leia helps him hold the cup steady as he takes a long drink. "Better?" she asks, after she pulls the cup away from his lips.

"Yeah," Luke says, coughing once. He winces, a faint twinge of pain arcing through his chest.

"You okay?" Leia asks, frowning.

"Yeah," Luke says again, and lifts a hand to massage at his sternum.

"Luke…" Leia begins, before trailing off. She looks away after a second, her gaze falling to the mattress beside her knee.

"Hmm?" Luke asks, trying to gently urge her on. He reaches for her hand.

"What...what happened?" she finally asks. After another long second, she turns her gaze back to him, and her darkdark eyes meet his desert blue. "On the Death Star," she clarifies, "when you went to face Vader and Palpatine."

He had known this was coming, Luke thinks bleakly. There was no way around it. He had just hoped she would wait a little longer before pressing for details.

He had already told Leia some of it, back in the pyre's clearing, when they had gone to collected Vader's-their _father_ 's-ashes. But even then he had only told her little fragments of pieces: that Vader had killed the Emperor to save him from death; that, in the end, it had been Anakin that had died in his arms, not Vader. He had not yet told her of the duel he had fought with Vader before casting aside his weapon in a blind show of faith, or of the torture he had suffered at Palpatine's hands.

He had not even told her their father's final words. She would reject them, he knew-he _knows_ -both the revelation and the pain their father had dealt her over the years still far too fresh and bleeding of wounds on her heart.

Luke takes a deep breath, and looks into his sister's eyes. "I'm fine, Leia," he tells her, and tries to smile reassuringly.

"That doesn't answer my question," Leia says tartly.

Luke sighs, and looks away, his gaze drifting to the off-white ceiling above his bed. "Fine then. I don't want to talk about it," he says.

There's a half second of silence, and Luke thinks that Leia is going to let him have that. Then, "You're about as good of a liar as a nerf," she tells him bluntly. "I can…" And then she trails off again, her words sliding into confused and startled silence. It is enough of a surprise to hear that Luke looks quickly back at her, his eyes going to her face. She is frowning, and her own gaze is curiously unfocused, as if her attention is drawn elsewhere other than the room before her. "I can _feel_ it," she says at last, after the silence has dragged out for one, two, three long seconds.

"And I could feel it before, too," she goes on abruptly, and her words tumble out in a long, rushed stream that somehow-in a way Luke is fairly certain only Leia could manage-does not actually sound harried or fumbled. "After we blew up the bunker and took down the shield, there was a second-a few seconds, maybe, except it felt like a year-where I could feel _you_." She takes a breath, and she blinks and looks at him, their gazes meeting once more. "I could feel your pain, Luke, as if it was my own. I could feel it burning in my bones, searing and scorching, and I could feel you screaming- _us_ screaming, because suddenly it wasn't _you_ and _me_ anymore it was _us_. And gods, Luke, I tried to help. I could feel the darkness, and I tried…" She closes her eyes, and turns her head away.

"Hey," Luke says softly, cutting her off as at last her words fail and she fumbles, trying to speak and breathe at once. "Leia, look at me."

She does, her dark gaze turning back to him.

Luke tightens his fingers around hers, and then with a second thought covers their joined hands with his right, mechanical hand. "When I was on the Death Star," Luke begins, speaking slowly, carefully, testing and trying each word before he lets it fall from his tongue, "Palpatine tried to turn me to the Dark Side." Luke hesitates, and Leia is silent, waiting for him to find the words to continue. "When he realized he couldn't turn me," Luke continues on at last, after taking a deep breath and swallowing hard, "Palpatine tried to kill me. He was torturing me-shooting me with some sort of Force-controlled lightning. He was laughing as he watched me die," Luke adds darkly, like an afterthough.

"Luke," Leia breathes-but there is iron in his name when she says it, iron and flame. And just as she had been able to feel his lie before-and just as Luke had been able to feel her pain on Endor when she had been shot in the arm; just as he had been able to feel her terror, her nightmares in the darkest hours of many midnights; just as he had been able to feel her anger and her exhaustion whispering in secret corners of his mind since that fateful encounter on Bespin-now he feels her worry and concern crawling in alongside the fury that rushes through her, sudden and red and scorching.

He moves without thinking, reaches without thought or conscious effort, as easily as if he had done it a thousand times. Soundless, motionless, sightless, he stretches out his heart and his mind and brushes against the blazing sun and towering mountain that is Leia-that is his _sister_. He touches her mind, his own thoughts little more than a soft whisper on a summer's breeze.

 _Leia,_ he murmurs, perhaps even chides.

He feels as much as sees her tense beside him, her fingers tightening white-knuckled around his, her teeth clenching and her eyes flashing. For half a breath-half a heartbeat, half a flicker of thought-Luke sees as much as feels her adamantine walls rise around the fortress of her mind, all steel and ice and impenetrable heights.

 _Leia,_ he calls again, and brushes against the light of her mind once more.

Fear, uncertainty, and what almost feels like desperation swirl together, hot and cold and five thousand shades of rose. She is a tempest, a maelstrom of indecision-a labyrinth of shadows and voices and death, of gateways long locked shut tight by men Luke will never know, of bridges burned by men Luke knows _too_ well.

 _Leia,_ he whispers. _Leia, it's me._

The tempest calms. The shadows fade to gold. And her walls-all steel and ice and bitter mortar, which had kept even Vader, their _father_ , from her entering mind-turn to mist before him.

 _Luke,_ she whispers, and her voice is a burning flame and a whispering wind, rain mixed with stone.

Luke lifts his right hand, and cups Leia's cheek. _I love you, little sister,_ he tells her, smiling softly, happily, contentedly.

 _I love you too,_ Leia replies. Then her smile slides sideways, falling into a crooked grin. _But I'm older._


	2. ii

**Chapter Rating/Warnings:** K+ / None

 **Chapter Time Frame:** missing scene from _A New Hope_

 **Notes:** sorry y'all for the long time since I posted chapter one. This has actually been done for a couple of months now...I just kept forgetting to post it here. whoops.

Also, a huge thank you to everyone who favorited and followed last chapter, and an extra special thank you to all of you who reviewed. I'm so sorry I didn't reply personally to your kind words, but please know that the comments you left made my day.

I'd absolutely love to hear all of your thoughts, even if it's just a simple "I liked it!" (or an "I didn't like it" too, I suppose...) Most importantly, though, I hope that you enjoy

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 _ **ii. hey sister, know the water's sweet but blood is thicker**_

It would be many years before Luke understood what drew him to the aft cargo hold that night.

The hour was late, the _Falcon_ silent as she hurtled through hyperspace toward the base the princess still hadn't named, the lights dimmed to soft yellow and softer shadow. Han and Chewie were both asleep, Han in the captain's cabin, Chewie on the bunk beneath Luke's in the crew cabin, and the hush of their slumber filled the _Falcon_ 's already silent corridors with a dazed, dusty sort of quiet.

It was a quiet that grated on Luke's bones.

It had never been silent on Tatooine. Always the wind was blowing, or the sand was skirling about the eaves of the house, or the birds and lizards of the desert were singing to the moons. The air was always alive, always humming with life and silent breath, even in the heat of the midafternoon when the suns were at their zenith and all the world lay under the shackle of their scorching light. Not like in space, as Luke was quickly discovering, where the air was stale, recycled a hundred thousand times only to be recycled again. It felt like death—like metal, and silence, and darkness which reminded Luke of a tomb.

He ghosted through the halls, two blankets wrapped around his shoulders and trailing along the floor after him like an ancient wizard's long cloak, listening to the hum of the _Falcon_ 's engines rumbling through the chilled air, feeling the mechanical thunder in the grates and hollow panels beneath his bare feet. He ached, both within and without, the hollow carved into his heart matching the burn in his muscles and the sting in his raw hands throb for throb. A thick lump sat heavy in his throat, making it difficult to breathe.

His third time circling the _Falcon_ , Luke paused at the junction of corridors that led down to the cargo holds in the belly of the ship. Han had warned him early on not to snoop, and Luke had listened—if only because Ben had given him a _Look_ after the pilot had left the room, warning him to obey the older man. But now, as he stood there and faced the dim darkness of the hallway curving downwards, clutching the blankets—one green and one blue—close about his shoulders, Luke could not deny the incessant pull of _Need_ that tugged at his belly.

 _You're dead now anyway,_ Luke thought bitterly at Ben's memory. _Maybe if you were still alive, you could have convinced me not to do this._

Wrapping the blankets even tighter around his body, as if to ward off any retribution for his decision, Luke turned down the side corridor.

The hallway curved around the edge of the _Falcon_ 's outer hull, the gleaming metal floor—which Luke suspected likely hid more smuggling compartments, the likes of which they had hidden in when sneaking onto the Death Star—disappearing from sight as the corridor made a sharp turn. Rounding the bend, Luke came very suddenly upon a fork. The two branches were nearly identical, if mirrored, in both shape and the faintly glowing lights recessed into the sloping ceiling, shedding pale yellow light filled with dusky grey down each route. For a second he hesitated, eyeing both halls with curiosity—but then, again, the _Need_ tugged at him, and he turned to the right.

The way he'd chosen bent sharply right and dipped down further still, until Luke was sure that he was walking along the very lower hull of the _Falcon_. Shelving compartments lined the walls, the lockpads on each blinking slow red light into the shadows, and Luke wondered distantly whether or not they were full—and if they were, what was in them. Before he could decide whether or not to stop and try to open one of the compartments to see, however, the corridor opened into a large, brightly lit room stacked with crates and sealed tubs.

The blast door, recessed into the inner wall, stood open, and Luke walked boldly into the cargo hold, looking around him as he entered. The labels on the crates and most of the tubs crammed against the paneled walls and stacked haphazardly across the smooth durasteel floors announced that they were filled with food, tools and parts for the ship, and other such necessities for long-distance space travel. Only a few could Luke not recognize.

"What are you doing down here?"

The voice startled Luke and he jumped, whirling around to face the speaker. It was not, as he had instinctively expected, Han. Instead, to his surprise—though it should not have surprised him, he realized a second later as his mind caught up with his body, and he fully processed both the voice and the words—he found himself facing the princess, who was sitting wedged between two crates shoved against the right-hand wall. Her legs were tucked up to her chest, her arms wrapped tightly around her shins, and from the red marks on her forehead, Luke suspected she had been leaning her face against her knees.

He recognized it as the same position he naturally wanted to curl into whenever he wanted to cry.

"Oh," Luke said, feeling very stupid and very flustered, at both the sight of the princess and the thought. "Sorry."

The princess frowned—and then very abruptly stood, smoothing out invisible creases in her stained dress. "Sorry for what?" she asked briskly, stepping out from between the crates. "And you haven't answered my first question," she added.

"Uh..." Luke blushed, and felt even more stupid as he fumbled for an answer. "Sorry for disturbing you, I suppose," he said after a few seconds of awkward silence. "And I was just exploring," he told her. "I couldn't sleep, and it was like I _needed_ to come down here, for some reason..." He trailed off lamely.

"Hm," the princess said. She eyed him for a moment, her dark eyes flashing in the bright floodlights mounted on the walls, as if she was appraising him and the truth of his statement—or maybe the nature of his intent. But she said nothing as at last she moved, stepping forward to sweep around him toward the door.

"Wait," Luke said, turning as she circled him, and taking an aborted step toward her retreating back.

The princess hesitated, her step faltering as he called to her, and she halfway glanced over her shoulder. "What?" she asked, testy and tired. Somehow, Luke got the sense that she did not use that tone of voice often—at least, she hadn't before. It was brittle, and raw, and so very, very close to breaking.

"Are you okay?" Luke asked with a sudden surge of confidence.

"I'm fine," the princess said sharply. "Why wouldn't I be?" She did not turn to look at Luke—but then, neither did she leave as Luke had more than half expected her to.

"I don't know," Luke said with a small shrug. "You look tired, and you don't sound very good. And it's just not normal for someone to flee from a room as soon as someone else walks into it."

"I'm not fleeing," the princess snapped.

"No?" Luke asked, surprising even himself with how soft his voice was as it came out of his mouth. "Then what are you doing?"

"I'm..." And then abruptly the princess whirled, her dark eyes flashing up to Luke's. He was shocked to see them wide and over-bright. "I don't _run_ ," she hissed at him, taking a savage step forward, fingers balling into fists at her sides. "I'm not a _coward_."

"I didn't say you were," Luke said hurriedly. "I just meant that..."

"What?" the princess asked, eyes narrowing dangerously.

Luke took a deep breath. "You look cold," he said at last. He pulled the green blanket from around his shoulders and held it out. "Here," he said. "Maybe this will help."

"I'm not—" the princess began, before abruptly cutting herself off. "Thank you," she said instead. Taking three quick steps forward, she took the proffered blanket. She did not, however, wrap it around her shoulders as Luke had; she just stood there for a long moment, the blanket in hand, watching Luke.

"Are you okay?" Luke asked again, even more gently than the first time.

And once again the princess surprised Luke. She shook her head, the motion slow and filled with something dark and dreadful that Luke couldn't, and didn't _want_ ,to name.

Then, without another word, the princess turned and left, still clutching the blanket Luke had given her.

Something was different now, though. Of that, Luke was somehow very certain.

It would be many long years before Leia told Luke that, after leaving him in the cargo hold, she had found a dark corner in the medbay and had cried—though she had not yet been able to shed tears, she would tell him, and her sobbing had been more dry heaves and panicked gasps than true weeping—into the blanket he had given her.

It would be years even longer before she told him that his giving her the blanket was the first time someone had shown her kindness, simply for kindness's sake, since before her capture—and that it was, in that moment, that she had first truly loved him.


End file.
